Thoughts about people, technology and running a company

Menu

Month: August 2006

GoogleWifi modem vendor (we used to be in same office building)Its hard to be in Mountain View and not to constantly feel the presence of Google. Everytime I go out to dinner, we can count at least 3-4 people wearing Google shirts. Google does usability testing at my favorite cafe (Dana Street Roasting House). Many of my friends work for Google. And now, everytime I look at avalable wireless networks, I see “GoogleWifi”. I have not actually used it myself – its not because I did not try. I tried – from several places in Mountain View. Even reached the wifi registration page a few times. But the connection is not strong enough. Not even from the coffee shop (Dana Stree cafe). Also, I have been using Live555 (a free wireless provider) for a while at Dana Street, so feel a certain loyalty towards them.

I have been meaning to write about this for a while. Amit, who heads the Uzanto team in India started a new blog on the Indian web products scene called Webyantra (the word Yantra literally means an instrument of means. From wikipedia: “The yantra is like a microcosmic picture of the macrocosm. It is a focusing point and an outer and inner doorway”). This blog has changed my view of the Indian startup scene. If you follow newspapers, magazines about the tech scene in India, or even some of the big blogs like Om Malik or Content Sutra who write about India, you will hear about what the big service companies (Infosys, Satyam) are doing. You will also hear about the wheelings and dealings of the broadband, or mobile market. What you will not about is the small startups, the new tech entrepreneurs, the people starting new web services for the Indian market, or the two person teams starting up in their living rooms (the whole garage thing is less common in India).

Nate Bolt from Ethnio (a truly web-based usability tool) and I will be giving two talks on remote user research this week. First talk is at Adaptive Path’s User Experience week, second is at Philadelphia CHI. You can find out more on the MindCanvas blog.

In the meantime, we have exciting new developments with MindCanvas. I will blog it as soon as I have a moment free!

Here are my slides for the Webvisions talk. The talk pulled together a lot of threads that I have been thinking about recently. How social sharing is happening on the web (tagging is but one way of social sharing. There are several other ways, e.g., viral sharing at YouTube). How massively multiplayer games can design of such social apps. And finally, how rich interfaces (yes, I am talking about AJAX) fit in and bolster these trends. Some people who attended the talk had somekind words. Below are my slides for the talk. Enjoy!

The upcoming BayCHI (August 8th) will have a talk byBill Scott (from Yahoo) about AJAX design patterns. Also, Matt Mullenweg (from my favorite blogging platform: WordPress) will talk about how to get the first 100k users. As usual, BayCHI is at 7.30 PM at PARC, Palo Alto. If you want to let the world know that you will be there (and find out who else will be there), then go to Upcoming.